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Friday, February 28, 2014

Grandma's house

The house was torn down last week, and I didn’t even know it was coming. Not that it matters, really. Grandma and Grandpa have been gone for years now.

Yet it is strange to have a place in my memory with such vivd colors that no longer exists. That land will now support condominiums, not rose bushes and little girls running barefoot and drinking from the hose. I remember the delicious plastic flavor of the first sips from a hot hose.

It’s odd: the fragrance of roses makes me want to eat raspberries, because they grew near each other in her yard. I would pick an enormous bowl of berries, then eat them all, staining my fingers and mouth red. I do not recall sharing them, ever.

I remember how mom would walk around the yard with her mom, to see the flowers growing, commenting on the lovely blooms while holding her arm to keep her steady. And writing this makes me realize that I have not made much time for flower-viewing walks in my mom’s yard. I’d better make time for that, before they, too, are buried by condominiums.

I remember hiding in grandma’s shoe closet, and sliding down the banister. Did my mom actually let me do that, or did I sneak? I cannot recall, but there are no guilty feelings mixed with that memory.

Grandma always had parakeets, and I loved watching them, hearing them sing.

I remember being half-asleep, being carried down the cement steps and into the car, on the nights grandma would watch me, when my mom worked late.

I do not remember much of my grandfather. Our lives intersected only briefly. He died when I was two. I can picture him in the kitchen, and almost hear is voice. And I remember my mom hugging my dad in our kitchen when he died. But that is all.

I remember the soft, cool skin of grandma’s arms around me, sitting on her lap in an aluminum chair on the back patio. I was a distracted teenager when she faced her final illness. I wish I would have spent more time in those arms.

But it is good to go back to her house in my memory. It is good to try to recall myself as a child, to remember what it was like when life was about playing and eating snacks and riding my big wheel. It wasn’t perfect, of course, and as I look back with my big-girl eyes on my little girl days, the memories are filled with love, and longing, and an occassional whiff of cigarette smoke.

3 comments:

lillies of the valley by the sidewalkWhite lace curtains in the living roomTangled christmas lightsMetal chairs (aluminum?)Flower beds, pansies ant plantsThe alley and coit school and “the coloreds.”The washer and dryer in the kitchen- I wonder if they were always there or if they moved up there when she was too old to use the basement stairs?Bathroom smelling like roseThe nativity set in the fancy dining roomParakeetsSoft couches (what was that material called?)The accordion wall that separated her bedroom from the dining roomThe shoe closet- a great place for hidingRowdy games of spoons with the Pat and Otto and kidsChristmas FOOD and noise and familyThe smell of cigarette smokeThe mysterious atticThe small room with the clutter, plus 2 bedrooms upstairs where I would sleep sometimes(I wonder how they had 5 kids in there growing up?)Grandma never drove, but she walked to the hospital to volunteerThe alleyRiding my bike on the sidewalk (I think Grandma had a big wheel there for me.)

Your grandpa Howard's 13 inch black-and-white TV set in the kitchen.The old bench behind the chestnut treeThe crooked cement path behind the petunias to the shedThe Pear treeSitting out back on the patio